Glen Hansard Is ‘Fucking Invincible’

Glen Hansard loves being Irish.

He’s well aware that in today’s current political climate, it’s a taboo thing to say because we live in an overtly nationalist world.

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But he can’t help himself.

“All of our rivers are named after goddesses,” he says in his thick Dublin accent. There’s passion in his voice as he tells me about the beauty of Ireland over a video call. “We think differently. Not to say we think differently from the rest of Europe, but I think we may have a slightly different route. We are a storytelling nation. We come from a country of mysticism and paganism. I love being Irish in that I love the depth of the language as well. The language is very poetic. I don’t speak it very well. But, I’m very attached and in love with the depth of my language and my place.”

Hansard is wearing a black mock turtleneck sweater, his once red curly hair and beard now a soft white. As of this interview, the Irish musician is in New York City for a couple of shows: last night at City Winery and tonight at the Bowery Ballroom.

I first discovered the Irish musician in 1991 when I was in ninth grade. I had just seen The Commitments, in which he plays guitarist Outspan Foster, and loved it. A friend of mine introduced me to the Frames, Hansard’s rock band. I still remember hearing “The Dancer” off the band’s debut album, Another Love Song, for the first time, and how enamored I was by it.

Since then, Hansard has become a worldwide sensation as the frontman for the Frames, his solo work, and one-half of the folk duo the Swell Season with Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová.

To celebrate his more than 30-year career, he’s releasing a two-part live retrospective album, Don+t Settle – Transmissions East and West. Transmissions East (Vol. 1) is out April 24, and Transmissions West (Vol. 2) will release later this year.

The album was inspired by a concert Hansard performed at Zuiderparktheater in The Hague in the summer of 2024. Hansard recalls that five or six songs into his set, a torrential downpour began. When he noticed people leaving to get out of the rain, he invited the entire audience onstage.

“We had like a thousand people sitting around us while we played,” says Hansard. “People really enjoyed it because suddenly, they’re sitting next to the musicians that they’re watching. They’re right next to them. And they’re in there, and they’re listening to the musicians talk to each other. Suddenly, they’re in the machinery of what a concert is.”

Don+t Settle was recorded in front of a small, intimate audience over two nights in April 2025 at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus, a former East German radio facility. It features live and updated reinterpretations of some of Hansard’s most loved songs from the Frames, his solo work, and the Swell Season, with no vocal overdubs, second takes, autotune, or editing.

“We decided to do it on my 55th birthday,” says Hansard. “I’m really happy for the songs because some of them, I felt like I never quite got right on record, and on the live record, they just seem to come alive in a different way.”

The album is named after the second track on his fourth solo album, This Wild Willing.

“I’m at an age where you either put your foot on the gas, or you take your foot off the gas,” he says. “And I very much need to put my foot on the gas. I want to work, I want to be in the world. I want to be making music. And so, the title made sense.”

Hansard discovered his love of music through jail time and Bob Dylan, though not exactly how you might think.

As a kid in Dublin, Hansard was getting into trouble; stealing cars, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, typical of kids in his neighborhood, he says.

“Where I grew up, there was no excitement. So we were looking for it the whole time. I was definitely slipping, and my mom was a bit worried about me. She had every right to be.”

Hansard admired his girlfriend’s older brother, who gave him a cassette of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. “I thought he was kind of cool,” he says. “He was mad, but he was also a very cool dude”.

At the same time, Hansard’s uncle was in jail and had left his guitar at Hansard’s house.

“The convergence of the instrument being left at our house and discovering Bob Dylan was, I would say, one of those moments where everything aligned,” Hansard says. “And I disappeared into music. I had that moment where I stepped out of one skin and into another, and I completely metamorphosed into a different person.”

Hansard found himself in Dublin City, hanging out with writers like Seamus Heaney, directors like Jim Sheridan, and listening to Paul Meehan reciting poetry in a basement. Though he had dropped out of school, he was getting a different kind of education.

“Suddenly, I was in a very different world,” he says. “I had an inferiority complex, with the fact that I was from a working-class neighborhood, didn’t have a proper education, left school young, all of that. But man, did I catch up because I was excited about information. I was excited about literature and about songwriting. And Dylan was my north star.”

At 13, Hansard started busking on the streets of Dublin, first in the laneways—the narrow thoroughfares behind buildings that connect the city’s major roads—so he could learn to project his singing as he listened to his voice echo off the walls. As he grew in confidence, he moved to Dublin’s main street, Grafton.

“When you take out your instrument on the street, you’re declaring yourself; that’s the hardest part of busking,” says Hansard. “Unzipping the case, taking out the instrument, putting the case on the ground, putting the instrument on. After that, it’s a doddle. But when you do that, you’re saying, ‘I’m doing something. I’m declaring myself a musician. I’m declaring myself a person who is worthy of your attention.’”

As a busker, Hansard says he learned two lessons: The coin is never a measurement of how good you are; it’s either charity or appreciation. And if you’re always in a good mood, you’ll always make more money.

Hansard didn’t expect to get rich off busking. Nor was that the reason he did it.

“I wasn’t fishing for coins. I realized early on I was fishing for something else,” he says. “What was important was something energetic that I can’t quite put my finger on. I guess approval. I mean, maybe that’s it. You know, some kind of acknowledgement that you exist, that you’re there. And so it changed everything about performance for me.”

Hansard recalls an Irish term, Aisling, (pronounced ashling), that means “vision.” He tells me that the Irish are very close to the Indigenous idea of the vision quest, or the walkabout.

“The guitar is like a strange kind of a key,” he says. “You step out into your day, and you take out your instrument, and your day could go in any direction.”

When Hansard was 18, he signed with Island Records, and in 1990, he formed the Frames, which would eventually release seven albums, the last of which, Longitude, was released in 2015. While they were working on their first record, he joined the cast of The Commitments, quite by accident, he says.

“I didn’t actually go for the role. I never auditioned for it.”

He tells me he and his actor friend had been up all night smoking weed, and had walked together to his friend’s audition the next morning. Hansard, guitar in hand, sat in the waiting room, waiting for his buddy to come out of the audition.

When a member of the film’s casting came out, they zeroed in on his red hair and guitar, which he says was exactly what they were looking for. They asked him to read a few lines; he agreed, and he got the role of Outspan Foster.

Over the years, Hansard has been quoted as saying that he regretted his experience in The Commitments. So, I asked him about it to set the record straight.

“Just to clear this up, I’m incredibly proud. I was a massive Roddy Doyle fan before The Commitments,” he says. “And to be cast in his story was incredible. I loved every moment of it.”

But he says he was worried the film would interfere with his music career, which he preferred to concentrate on. But when he did interviews to promote the Frames’ first album, all the media wanted to talk about was The Commitments, which came out around the same time.

“The Commitments was always the first question of everything at the time,” he says. “Of course it was. But for me, I was like, ‘There’s more to me than this.’ So that was where that discomfort came from. I was kinda like, “Fuck The Commitments! I’m a musician!’ I should have seen it as a blessing, but when you’re young and full of your own scheme…Ironically, the two biggest moments of my career came through film. So, who am I to argue with that?”

Hansard, of course, is referring to his 2007 film, Once, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Original Song. It also birthed his joint music project with Irglová, the Swell Season. The duo released three albums: The Swell Season in 2006, Strict Joy in 2009, and 2025’s Forward.

If you’ve ever seen him perform live, you know Hansard has a very passionate, some would even say intense, style onstage. More than 30 years later, he still has the heart of a busker.

“Every night I walk on stage, I walk on stage as a busker,” he says. “I don’t walk on stage as a professional musician because I know that if I go on as a professional musician, I’m gonna need the drummer to code 1, 2, 3, 4. and we’re all gonna start. I always want to trip up the band. My instinct is to trip up the music, get away from the form, break the form. Let’s busk, let’s busk. Because when we busk, we call the band into the present. And then everyone’s called into the present. And that’s the great lesson of busking, is that you’re always in the present. You’re letting the song come through you rather than you trying to wrestle the song down into your idea of what it should be.”

Hansard tells me that every night before a show, he sends his tour manager the set list, and his manager only prints one copy because he knows that two minutes before hitting the stage, Hansard is going to change his mind. Then his manager prints out the final copies, and the band goes on stage. And Hansard doesn’t follow that set list either.

“The room, the feeling, you, the spirit of the place, the day that’s in it, where the moon is sitting, everything, whatever it is, is dictating the gig. And I love that.”

Six weeks ago, Hansard’s back went out, and since then, he’s been in a lot of pain. He says it was a real wake-up call for him, a sign that he needs to exercise more and get his core strength back. Getting older isn’t easy. But that doesn’t mean you have to give in to it. “If you find yourself saying, ‘I’m getting old,’ you’re in trouble,” he says. “You’ve got to get serious or else you start giving into all your aches and pains, and before you know it, you’re canceling shows, and you’re just disappearing.”

He makes a comment about how he imagines Bob Dylan eventually dying on stage one night, doing what he loves doing.

“That will be his happiest way out. I don’t want to sound glib, but this is something I want to do,” Hansard says. “I want my voice to hold out. I want my body to hold out. I want to write 10 good songs. I still don’t feel like I’ve done that. I’m in this for the long haul. So I’m a believer in the energy and the spirit of the music. And when it’s flowing through you, and you’re in that exalted high, sweet place of playing music, it’s fucking invincible.”

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